https://youtu.be/LEAfaPBKCCQFinding a financial advisor South Suburbs homeowners can trust matters more than most people expect, especially when a home sale is about to change your financial picture in a big way. Proceeds from a sale can affect taxes, retirement accounts, and long term planning all at once. Choosing the right person to help you think it through matters more than most homeowners realize. Often, they only realize it once they are already sitting across from someone, papers in hand, with a decision to make.
Why This Decision Deserves Extra Care
A home is often the single largest asset a homeowner over 50 has ever managed. Selling it does not just move money into a bank account. Instead, it touches capital gains, required minimum distributions, Social Security timing, and the overall shape of retirement income. Getting good advice before that sale closes tends to matter far more than getting advice afterward. By then, homeowners have usually already locked in their decisions.
Unfortunately, not every financial advisor is equally equipped to give advice that puts your interests first. Some are also not equally motivated to do so. Fortunately, understanding a few key distinctions can save homeowners real money and real stress. None of these distinctions require a finance degree to understand. They simply require knowing what questions to ask before you commit to working with someone.
Understand How Advisors Are Actually Paid
According to the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors, financial professionals generally earn compensation in one of three ways: commission, a mix of commission and fee, or fee only. Commission based advisors earn money from the specific products they sell. Commission and fee advisors earn a mix of both. Fee only advisors, meanwhile, receive payment directly from the client, with no commissions from product sales at all.
This distinction matters because it shapes the advice you receive. A commission based advisor may have a financial incentive to recommend certain products over others. This can happen even when those products are not the best fit for your situation. A fee only advisor, by contrast, has no such incentive built into the compensation structure itself.
Neither model automatically makes someone a bad advisor. However, understanding how your advisor gets paid is one of the clearest ways to spot a conflict of interest. It is far easier to see it now than after it affects you.
Ask About Fiduciary Duty, Specifically
According to the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, one important question stands above the rest. Will the advisor commit, in writing, to a fiduciary duty? The law requires a fiduciary to put your interests ahead of their own. A non fiduciary, working instead under a suitability standard, only has to recommend something that is appropriate. It does not have to be the best available option.
CFP Board notes that CFP® professionals commit to acting as a fiduciary at all times as part of their certification. That commitment does not guarantee perfect advice. Still, it does raise the baseline standard you are working with. Asking this question directly is simple. Getting the answer in writing is what actually protects you before a major financial decision like a home sale.
Check Their Background Before You Trust Them With Anything
Even a warm referral from a friend or family member is not a substitute for checking an advisor’s actual record. A trusted neighbor’s recommendation reflects their own experience, not a background check, and the two are not the same thing. According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Investor.gov, checking the background of any investment professional is one of the most important steps before hiring one. Notably, unlicensed or unregistered individuals commit a significant share of investment fraud in this country.
FINRA’s BrokerCheck tool gives you a free way to research a broker or advisor’s history. It covers registration, licenses, and any disciplinary actions on record. According to FINRA, a BrokerCheck report lists the individual’s employment history for the past ten years. It also lists current registrations and licenses, along with any customer disputes or disciplinary events linked to their name. This search takes only a few minutes. It can, however, surface red flags that a friendly first meeting never would.
For advisors who are not brokers, the SEC’s Investment Adviser Public Disclosure database serves a similar purpose. Running both searches before your first real meeting is a small investment of time. In exchange, it can prevent a much larger problem down the road.
Questions Worth Asking at the First Meeting
A good first meeting should feel more like an interview than a sales pitch. According to CFP Board’s guide, useful questions include asking about the advisor’s specific experience. Ask, in particular, about clients in circumstances similar to yours. It also helps to ask how they earn their compensation, and whether a regulator has ever publicly disciplined them.
Additionally, it helps to ask directly about experience with home sales specifically. Not every financial advisor regularly handles clients navigating a major property sale. The tax and timing considerations involved often differ from typical investment planning. An advisor who works often with homeowners over 50 will usually be comfortable with detailed questions. They should be able to speak clearly about how a sale might affect your broader financial picture. A vague reassurance, by contrast, is often a sign to keep looking.
It is worth bringing a written list of questions to that first meeting rather than trying to remember everything on the spot. A good advisor welcomes a homeowner who comes prepared. If anything, a prepared client tends to get a more thorough, more useful first conversation than one who simply nods along.
Why This Matters More Around a Home Sale
I have written before about what happens to retirement accounts when you sell your home and downsize. The overlap between a home sale and retirement planning is exactly why the right advisor matters so much here. A single transaction can touch multiple parts of your financial life at once. A fragmented approach, where nobody is looking at the whole picture, tends to create costly blind spots as a result.
The right advisor does not just help you invest the proceeds after the sale closes. Rather, they help you think through timing and tax implications. They also help you see how the sale fits into your broader retirement picture, well before you ever sign anything.
As an SRES®, I’ve trained to understand how a home sale interacts with the rest of a homeowner’s financial life. That said, I am not a financial advisor myself, and I cannot give financial advice. Part of what an SRES® brings to the table is knowing when to bring in the right specialist. It also means helping you ask the right questions once you are in the room with one. You can learn more about what the SRES® designation covers directly from the National Association of Realtors.
Trust Takes a Little Homework
Finding a trusted financial advisor is not about finding someone who feels the most reassuring in a first meeting. Instead, it is about verifying credentials and understanding compensation. It also means asking pointed questions before you hand over any part of your financial future. A few hours of homework before that first meeting, in the end, can prevent years of regret afterward.
None of this needs to feel adversarial. A good advisor expects and welcomes these questions, because a well informed client tends to make better decisions and stay a client longer. If someone bristles when you ask how they get paid or whether they will act as a fiduciary, that reaction alone tells you something worth knowing before you sign anything.
When you are thinking about your next move, the free resource library has practical guides covering every aspect of later-life housing, from downsizing and aging in place to senior living options, care alternatives, and the resources you need to make confident decisions. And if you would like to understand how I work with homeowners over 50, the Homeowners 50+ page is the right place to start.
Prefer watching instead of reading? This auto-generated video summarizes the key points discussed in this article.
Disclaimer: This blog is for educational purposes only and does not constitute tax, legal, or financial advice. Every homeowner’s situation is unique. Please consult a qualified CPA, tax advisor, or estate attorney before making any decisions related to the sale of your home.
If you’re starting to think about what comes next, you don’t have to figure it out on your own. Sometimes it helps just to talk things through.
You can always take the next step at your own pace, with no pressure and no expectations. I’m always happy to help you get a clearer picture of your options.
Michelle Williams is a REALTOR® and SRES® serving Chicago and the South Suburbs, helping homeowners 50+ make confident decisions about their next move.